"Kurzweil is 60, but he intends to be no more than 40 when the singularity arrives."
hmm... read on.
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Manga does the Bible
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"Today, our public discourse is dominated by people who have been wrong about everything" damn skippy...
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While we are too busy deciding whether people kissing on the cheek is a sin... The world continues on...
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...and on, so beautifully, without us.
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Who was Cassini?

• First to observe 4 of saturn's moons
• He also discovered a gap between Saturn's two ring layers which is now named the Cassini Division
  
• The first to measure the true size of the solar system after figuring out our distance from Mars.
• A crater on Mars and another on our moon are named after him
• Born in 1625
  

I can barely think through these new allergies I have developed in this country but here are some things for you to look at that might give you allergies too..Or worse.

• It’s the ‘Oh Shit!’ Moment on Iran by Dave Lindor
• Drying Up Palestine- Watch this short online film about water issues in the Occupied Territories. (Great site called The Hub)
  
• Iraqi Refugee Children and Prostitution
• 2 Schools in Nablus- Watch a series on schools under occupation. Well made.
  

Numbers:

• Over 4 million Iraqi refugees...and counting
• 70% of Iraqis have no access to clean water
• Over 90% of Iraqi children have learning disabilities due to trauma
• $5,000 a second are spent on the war, how much is being spent on aid and peace?
• Hospitals in Gaza have 12 hour a day power cuts
• 80% of families in Gaza survive on food aid
• 70% of Gaza households earn less than $1.20 a day/person.

For the price of a side of fries...or a new cd...or a cinema ticket...you can save a life. If you are feeling generous the price of your flat screen, your laptop, your fancy shoes, the money we spend on all the things we can live without can provide safe drinking water, life saving medical care, school supplies, protection from exploitation, a future...

• Save the Children are helping Iraqi refugee children in Jordan
• Unicef- You can choose where your donation goes.
• Oxfam- Gaza crisis appeal
• UNRWA- Emergency aid to the Gaza and the West Bank

The petty parliament is finished, here's to the coming scramble. Are we going to be given the chance to hope, or just some more of the same clatter around our aching heads?

Obama is running on a platform of change, and everyone desperate enough to want it is following his pied piper tune even if they don't always know what it's saying...I think maybe we are desperate enough to become addicted to that siren song of 'change' too... And why not? We have tasted that rock called bottom, and in the immortal words of Yazz, y'know, there is only one way we can be headed...
I think.
But thinking is not one of my strong points these days so forgive me if I sound a little silly.

Don't you think it's time we grabbed that beautiful, dusty, crazy old dame called Kuwait and gave her a big shameless and heartbreaking kiss? Then with the blush of rekindled love on our cheeks we got out there and grabbed every single moron who thinks that he can have a piece of her to hang on his trophy wall... every single frustrated lump of hatred who wants to cover up her beautiful, ugly, seductive, funny, living, breathing, different parts because they offend him...every single lazy regressive coward who wants her to be the Miss Havisham she has turned into... and gave every single one of them a big fat kiss goodbye?

This mixed up, repressed lady needs some air and we are taking her out on the town to remind her, and ourselves, what it feels like to be free again...to be proud again...to be in love with everything. And once she can stand up straight again, maybe this beautiful place can take us all back in to her arms and we can finally be home.

No Comment

Gideon Levy of the Israeli Paper Ha'aretz writes:

" Two days earlier Israel killed more Palestinians than have been killed by all the Qassams over the past seven years. Among the dead were four children and an infant. The next day Israel killed another five boys. And who is the victim? Israel. And who is cruel? The Palestinians."
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Ira Chernus Writes:

"Palestinian deaths this week outnumbered Israeli deaths by about 30 to 1, and the count of serious injuries is even more lopsided."
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On March 2nd The Observer's Peter Beaumont wrote:

"Israel is again deliberately obstructing the transfer of urgent medical cases for treatment outside Gaza in the latest extension of its policy of collective punishment of Palestinians."
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Nimer Sultany writes in The Guardian:

"Perhaps it is easy to dismiss this suffering by blaming the victims and resorting to ready cliches. Indeed, Israeli propagandists go out of their way to repeat the soundbite: we withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and since then the Palestinians have been firing rockets on our southern towns."..."In his most recent report (pdf) of January 2008, the UN rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied territories has recounted Israel's actions in Gaza, calling them "war crimes" and demonstrating how these have been relentlessly producing a humanitarian crisis."
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B'Tselem: The Israeli Information center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
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3:15 pm
AUK has been evacuated after a bomb threat...
Or some kind of threat that is still not clear.
Check on your family and friends.
The authorities are at the university.
All is fine so far.
Earlier in the day, witnesses say, there was an apparent threat at a bank, some say Burgan.

Hell and a hand basket, we know you well.